Anyone here like Clark Ashton Smith? I have heard that he was the best prose-stylist of the Lovecraft circle and when I read him I certainly feel like he has a good grasp on his language and he has some sentences that I am a little jealous of, but I am curious to see what others think.
He's great. Incredible imagination. I think where he falls short is that his plots are not as compelling as those of Lovecraft and others. He was more interested in the arresting mood or image than in the plot.
>>25125601CAS is the single most underrated prose stylist of the 20th century.
>>25125639Dunsany wannabe without the nuance and whimsy.
>>25125716They're two completely different writers. Dunsany likes fairies and CAS likes dead things.
>>25125723>dunsany>only writing about fairiesNo
>>25125726Oh so you're autistic. Okay, Dunsany writes tales from fairyland and dreamland, CAS writes stories about death and futility. They're trying to accomplish different things.
>>25125732Dunsany wrote about death and futility at least 50 times. First in 1905. Then in 1906. Then again in 1907 and 1908. And the last time he wrote about death and futility was 1947. Can’t say that CAS separates himself on a great level.
>>25125733Something like Dunsany's Fame and the Poet is different from something like CAS's The Corpse and the Skeleton though. You still see Dunsany relying on a figure from Fairyland and you still see CAS appreciating a corpse like no one else ever could.
>>25125738I’ll continue this discussion when I get home
